Pictures.. we're just about there..

The living room with the new fireplace and mantlepiece. You can also see the new cable lights





Another view of the living room








A view of the kitchen from the living room.







The kitchen looking towards the 'side yard'.











The refrigerator second sink (food prep sink) and freezer and microwave










My cook-book-shelf












The bookcase, pantry, double oven.











Is followed by the cooktop











Then a cupboard (dishwasher)











Then sink and corner cabinets, trash compactor











Then a window and another cabinet











Living room from the kitchen









Two sweet faces








A close-up of the funky cable lights we have









The bathroom

Thu 13th..

Thursday 13th
The painters are here, and look like they will be for some time.

The carpenters came back and, in the living room, installed new skirting-boards (aka base-board in the US) which match the skirting board on the new fireplace. It is a little taller than the old one, and looks great.
They also installed more cornice (aka crown-molding) above the cabinets and around the wall/ceiling boundary. AND!! The corbal which tarts up the corner cabinet has been installed too! Cool.

We also bought new lighting for the living room. It is all new-fangled cable lights. They will run about 2" below the four pairs of beams that cross the living room. We bought them from Tech Lighting. Is cool because we can tilt and pivot them in any direction. We'll have 4 fixtures per pair of beams (for a total of 16 fixtures). Hopefully it will arrive in 10 or so days.

Friday 14th:
For the cabinets with corbals, the guys are installing the beadboard between the base cabinet and the wall cabinet, to make the look more like a standalone. (not sure what beadboard is called in England or Aus, but it is defined Beadboard is a type of paneling that can be used in many parts of your home and for many purposes. It is characterized by a series of thin raised strips, or beads that flow along each panel. A very popular wall paneling in the 1920s, it was originally made out of scraps of wood and left unfinished, painted or stained.')

Having a lot of difficulty choosing paint colours for the kitchen. Argh!

Hectic!

Things have been wild here. Lots of progress, but still a way to go.

The cabinets are in, the floor is installed, the granite (bar the island) is installed. The tiles in the bathroom are being grouted, the tiles in the kitchen are being installed.

The Kitchen with chipboard to support the granite (which has not been installed in this photo). The island has a steel top to support the granite (to allow for boys climbing where they shouldn't). Test paint colours on the walls. The window trim will be painted the same colour as the cabinets (cream).




Here is Jason (complete with wiggly front tooth). The tilers are working on the back-splash.







The Kitchen from the french doors.











This is a later photo of the kitchen. The granite has been installed on the counters but not on the island. The colour is a good foil for the cream cabinets. Its hard to see under the protective paper.

As I mentioned, the black top on the island is not granite - it is 1/2" thick steel to support the granite (and any climbing boys)). The granite was not installed on the island, as the first steel cut for supporting the island was not flat, so the installers couldn't install the slab on the island. This steel in this photo is the new 'flat' steel; the installers will be back (hopefully this week) to stick the granite to the steel. You can also see the almost-finished tile in this last photo; the backsplash is complete, and the tile around the granite is done (but not grouted yet).

Here is the bathroom, and tile detail.





Here is the bookcase near the french-doors (it also had granite installed, but is not shown here as this is an earlier photo). It needs crown-molding (we call it cornice); the cornice was missing from the shipment. You can also see a 'corbel' which will be installed at either end of the bookcase to make it look like a piece of furniture. Also, the backing will be cherry 'bead board' not tile.

The mantle-piece is impressive. The brick was removed, the floor levelled and it was replaced with black honed granite. Tarty, huh? The paint color for the living room is the right-most over the mantle-piece..









The painters have arrived to start painting the outside of the house. The main color is 'creekside green', but there will also be another (pale) green around the eaves (the painters got it wrong, and I caught them in time!)


Here are the french doors and brick landing. The carpenter hasn't been able to finish the siding on this side of the house yet...

Anyway, its looking good.

21st - 28th

Cabinets have been installed.

Tilers arrived, put up chicken wire to 'float' the tiles on the surface of the wall, rather than directly on the wall.

The floor dudes turned up. It looks COOL. It looks like a kitchen (sans appliances).

Pictures will come soon (as soon as my battery has recharged :-)

21st - Cabinets begin

Ok.. he was in LAS VEGAS on Monday!! But wasn't there to fritter away all my hard-earned money; at least not that he would admit; he claimed his son drives some sort of car rally. The contractor was on vacation on Monday, and had asked his two guys who were at our home on Fri installing the doors, to let me know they wouldn't be here until Tuesday morning.. unfortunately they didn't let me know.

He had their copy of their jobsheet (told ya he was anal). It listed their work for the day, and all the things they were supposed to tell me (which they didn't). Ok.. all explained.

So.. The cabinets are on the go, which is great. The kitchen designers popped in to say hi. There was a problem that the cabinet manufacturer not finishing off the edge of the cabinets properly, for the cabinets which had fancy footboards. They will order extra footboard and construct it themselves.

The kitchen designers made a mistake which the contractors discovered. The wall-oven cabinet is the same depth as the floor/base cabinet.. the problem is the granite on the floor/base cabinet will stick out 1" beyond the oven-cabinet. It will look weird, and need special edge work on the granite. The alternative is for the contractor to attach extra timber to the cabinets to bring them out 2", so the granite doesn't overhang into the oven cabinet. That seems the (cheapest and) best solution, as they already have matching board painted the right colour. The problem is there will be a visible 'seam' along the center of the oven cabinet (the top bit will be covered by the overhead cabinet. They called the designers, who said they had 'designed it' that way; the called the head contractor who said to push out the oven cabinet. I think leaving it as designed would look silly, and be more expensive to fix the granite countertop later.

The Concrete dudes did come yesterday to install some reinforcement for the concrete (they snuck in and out).

The siding will be done in a few weeks.. the dude doing the siding is working on something else right now, and the main contractor wants him to finish the job, rather than one of his other guys. Understandable.

So its all good again. Especially as we can actually walk around in the living room (some of the boxes are empty now). It was getting very tiring dodging all those huge boxes.

:-)

Then back to 0 again

I think our contractor has absconded with our money... No sign of him or his subbies. DESPITE having LAM today.. Not impressed Mr C.

Fri 17th October and Sat 18th. From 0 to 60 in 2 seconds..

1. The doors were installed, resulting in a lot of banging. Cool! The french doors look great. They let lots of light into the kitchen.



Here are the new windows







And the new sliding door









2. The chandelier arrived, was unpacked by moi. Nice! Much better proportioned than the first small one. 3. The cooktop (which is needed for templating the granite, along with the kitchen sink), was also delivered today. Here is the chandelier on top of the cooktop box, in our garage


4. Another painter came to quote. He gave us an on-the-spot quotation. It was for painting the living room and hallway, and the wall in our bedroom that had a door and now has a window :-) Lets just say the quote was 1/4 of the price of the painting quote by the contractor's subcontractor. Ridiculous. $1,100 instead of $4k. Good thing, really. My (old) car needed $2k worth of repairs today..

5. The kitchen cabinets were also delivered today. It took 2 guys 1.5+ hours. There is a MOUNTAIN of boxes in our living room! When the boys saw it they said 'cool! just like a maze'. No kidding!









We opened one of the boxes. This is the island, and the island-slot it will be installed in, this coming week. The island is cherry, the rest of the cabinets are painted cream.










Some subbies came on Sat to do the mold for the concrete steps coming from the french doors. They'll probably be pouring concrete on Mon. I also think cabinet installation is due to start Monday. The granite templating should be on Friday.

7th - 16th

Things have slowed down somewhat.

7th - 10th:
o The tapers were here again, making lots of mess plastering and sanding the walls
o The granite guys came to install the granite around the fireplace. It looks good.
o The mantelpiece guy was here to re-measure, to ensure the fireplace is the right size.

I got the cost of the change orders from the contractor.. $10k. Most of it was the additional electrical work we needed done (e.g. light switch near the front door for the living room.. we've had to cross the great and dark divide to turn on the lights in the past; we also put lights in the closets, etc, etc).

Mon 13th: The tapers came this morning for a short time to re-sand the surface. It looks as smooth as a baby's bum.

A painter came Tue to quote for painting the living-room and hallway.. haven't heard back yet. Nothing else happened Tue and Wed. All was quiet (waiting for the windows/doors).

Thu morning, some dudes turned up to install the windows - two in the kitchen, one in the bedroom! They will be here again Fri to install the doors. Once this is done, the siding can be completed.

The kitchen cabinets will be delivered soon. We'll need to remove the hardware from the living room floor to make room for the cabinets. Also the fridge will have to move to the hallway outside our bedroom, because once the cabinets are installed, the living-room floor needs to be patched and sanded.

1st, 2nd and 3rd and 6th of October

The electricians installed the closet lights. Its amazing.. we can actually see the contents! The electrician upgraded and replaced the electrical panel.

Last Wed and Thu, the drywall dudes came and banged up the drywall; the kitchen looks like a padded cell. It is amazing how much brighter the kitchen looks, despite the drywall being a depressing gray colour. It took them probably around 1.5 days to cut it to size and nail it up. They were very very fast. The wooden structure in the middle is the pony wall which will support the Island.

The bathroom looks kinda cool, as the drywall is a sea-green colour (the drywall in there is probably wet-wall). You can see a half-wall "pony-wall" in the foreground, and the bath in the background.





I asked the carpenter to come back and change the detail around the front door and window, as what he had done didn't look quite right. It was hard to do something sensible with this area because the door and windows are too close to repeat the same wood-detail as he did around the rest of the windows. So I asked him to make a change, and I think it looks better now.

Here is the window-detail unfettered.

The stone guy (an Aussie) came to re-template the granite for the fire-place according to a new plan to have the granite wrap-around the outside of the fireplace (which is apparently how its done in the US).

I also tried out some of the paint colours.. This combination is called Creekside Green and Navajo white. I tested it out on the new siding/window trim





On Thu I had to leave early to go to an art-in-action training class as I am an art docent in Jason's class. Needless to say Russ didn't cover up our bed, and because of the drywall installation (to cover where the door had been), our bed and bedroom was an enormous dust-bowl when I returned! Lovely. There will actually be a window located to the left of the drywall-patch, but as it hasn't arrived yet...

Russ and I chose the granite for the counter-tops on Friday afternoon. It is called Uba-Tuba (if you're a American-born it is pronounced oooba-toooba).

Today (Monday), the carpenters are back to put up the siding on the side of the house (up to the window height (they can't go higher until the new windows have arrived and been installed; reason for this is the window goes in first, then the wooden detail/trim next, then the siding around that).

The timber under Jason's bay-window has rotted away due to water damage. The carpenter will hack it out and replace it; this is possible because the window is actually supported at the top of window, not the bottom. There are two rods which run the length of the window - the top of the rods are attached to something that supports the window. At the bottom of the rods there are two screws which hold the (currently rotten) timber to the bottom of the window.

The tapers are here to tape up and cover-up the holes in the drywall. Apparently they tape-and-mud the seams. They 'mud' the seams 3x before sanding it smooth.

Oh, and here is a picture of our new aggregate (in case I haven't uploaded one).

That's all folks!

Sep 30th

The carpenters are finished the siding. Looks great.

The dry-wall guys were supposed to start today, but no sign of them: until 3pm when they delivered the drywall. I will complain to Mike that I need to know when the subcontractors are coming.

The low voltage guys were also supposed to come today, but no sign of them.

The electrician came again today for a few hours. I asked him to put lights in J & Ls closets, as I can't tell one part of their school uniform from another (its all navy blue and khaki)!

I worked out the cost of the two options for under-counter Xenon lights. $900 for strip lights, and $1200 for custom track lights. Both expensive.

I'd like to get the remaining choices finalized, and so have started on the quest to get the right colour paint! Hard choices! Benjamin Moore paints have a HUGE selection. I'm thinking a green/grey colour, with cream trim.

:-)

29th of September

Pretty quiet day. No sparky; only a few carpenters working on the siding. Hopefully they will be finished all they can tomorrow (they can't do the other side because they are waiting for the window and doors to arrive.

Got a quote for the mantelpiece.. $3700. You'd think it was made of gold. But no, just cherry.

The electricians seem to have disconnected the power socket Russ' piano uses.. so he's using a power cord.

The carpenters put up the 'pony wall' that would be used to support the Island. The supports went through the floor to the subfloor. Jason climbed on it this evening, and it was rock solid :-)

An insulation contractor came.. wasn't impressed. He was quick and messy.. left fibreglass insulation tufts all over the place. I had to go through and sweep up. Our contractors workers saw, and were horrified, so they helped clean up the rest. The insulation contractor was not great.

Spent a long time pulling nails and other sundry items out of the planters along the walkway today. Looks much better now.

Our contractor didn't like the low voltage guys had not removed some unused phone and cable cables in the floor.. he called them and asked them to pull up all the old ones.

I also spoke to the contractor about a portico-like structure at the entryway for the french doors.. so if its raining you can stand under there while opening the door. Wonder what that will cost?

Also looking at cabinet pulls.. want to order them so they're here before they're needed :-)

26th of September

More electrical work. More siding.

The low voltage contractors turned up.. (cable, phone). I asked them to fix the cable upstairs (low signal on some channels), but it was still not working this evening.

I was out looking for lighting alternatives.. grim pickings.

25th of September

The siding continues. The window details are well on their way.. the house is starting to look quite tarty.

The electricians were here installing plugs and lights. I asked them to add lights to our bedroom closets and the hall closets, because its almost impossible to find stuff in there!

After loving the lights, I held them up to the walls and decided the new lights for the hallways and the dining table are WAY TOO SMALL! So I'll need to return them. Because they're special order (almost everything is), I'll have to pay a restocking fee - a certain percentage of the cost. Argh. But we can't use them.. they look like pimples on pumpkins.

We took down the old flood lights and bought new ones. I also found a paintable wooden door-bell chime (the electricians said there would only be plastic ones!).

The Inspectors from the City of San Carlos came today. All is well, which is good. They like our contractor, and apparently our carpenter lives next door to the inspector, and has known him for 20 years.

It helps getting a local builder.

24th of September

Another hot day.

The carpenters are trying to get the siding done on all the parts of the house in direct sunlight earlier in the day, so they won't fry. Understandable. The siding is looking good.

The electrician wanted me to decide the location of the heated towel rail. And the vanity lights. We put the mirror up, to work out the location for the vanity lights, only to find out on opening the box containing the mirror, that it was too small! I tell you, good thing it was here early.. enough time to exchange it for the next size up. Because the lights are so large, we need to put the light fitting a little under the swivel point for the mirror.

The contractor laid out the island on the floor, so we could see the distance between the cabinets and the island. It looked good. We ordered 3 pendant lights, but it looks like we only need two. After the contractor left, Russell looked, and thought the island position needs to move a few inches closer to the cabinets.. this is because the other side of the island will be the main thoroughfare, as well as being the position of the seating around the island. I concur.

The contractor also went over the mantlepiece with Russ.. if there is enough granite in the slab (how couldn't there be?? its 10' x 5') we will 'return' the hearth around the fireplace, so that the mantlepiece rests on the hearth fully (rather than partially which is what would have been the case).

I asked the contractor to ask the plumber to install a new toilet upstairs. I am thoroughly sick of the stupid make-do handle.. which is a wrench tightened on the flushing handle. When I pulled out the toilet from the stack of supplies), I noticed the toilet seat was the wrong shape (yes, folks, there are different shaped toilet seats). So off to the plumbing supplier to exchange it for the right shape (more circular rather than more oval).

I need to follow up on the fountain supplier, the track lighting in the living room (which the elec estimated 650 to install along with three switches), the under-cabinet lights.. the shower curtain rail (which will probably be special order because of the length).

I just got the shock of my life.. the carpenter appeared outside my window as plain as day. This is not so shocking you say... Well, I'm on the second floor above the garage.. they are replacing the siding upstairs, and he's on the roof outside my window :-)

The lights arrived. Yay! The pendants are really nice, unlike their photo in their online catalog. So are the new hallway lamps, the new chandelier, and the bathroom sconces.

Went to look for the track and under counter lights. I think I know what we are going to buy. Do I sound tired? I am!

23rd of September

Slow going on the siding. Electrician was here, working on wiring. It was a HOT day. The newly laid aggregate looks pretty close to the existing.

There were some more questions over under-counter lighting. The lights I had chosen (it was the only option I was given in the store) was not what the electrician suggested was best; these are units of N feet in length, with lights at fixed intervals. The better (?!) recommendation is tiny xenon track lights which can be used under-counter. This gives flexibility as to how many (or few) you want to have. I went to our local lighting store, and they did not know what I meant (funnily enough neither did I.. but we finally found them). The lighting store thought they would be too hot for under-counter. The electrician says they're wrong.

What to do?

22nd of September

Whew. What a day! The concrete guys filled in the holes they made last week with concrete and aggregate. It looks good!

The electrician came today. We talked about outdoor lighting, locations of switches, the sockets and lights in the bathroom; we're moving two sockets in the bedroom to be either side of the bed, rather than the middle and edge of the room as they are now. Because we're having a mini-driveway, we decided we should have some lights near the entry way.. maybe a pole light (i.e. light on a stick). This will add nice ambiance to the outdoor lighting.

Tim-the-designer specified expensive low-voltage halogen lights in the Kitchen @ $150/can. The standard line-halogen lights are $100/can. We need about 19 cans.. Which is an extra $1000 for lighting we don't need. Apparently the low voltage halogens are used in specialist locations to highlight pictures on a wall etc.. So we'll go with the standard halogens. Thanks Tim-the-electrician!

Tim-the-designer also had lights on the toe-kick for the bathroom.. lights we wouldn't really ever use. So we nixed that. Probably saved us another $300.

I think we need better lighting in the living room, as the only light which currently goes on is the one on the fan, which is nigh-on useless.. It would make sense to have 2 tracks of track lighting - one near the fireplace, one near the opposite wall.. The fan will move to the center of the room.. We can use the extra $1000 from using the cheaper cans to put good lighting in! Also, as we are already patching the living room floor, we can take out those stupid in-floor power outlets which we never use, and which stick out and annoy me, and that are not currently grounded. Yay! We'll need to add another socket near the wall closest to the fireplace, but that shouldn't be too hard right now.

The carpenters have some of the siding up!

The HVAC guy told us the heating outlet in the bathroom is trouble. The plumbing is all along one wall, and the floor supports along another. There isn't a lot of room anywhere for the outlet, unless it goes in the floor, or in the pony wall. Not sure what to do at this point.

The guy who is building our mantlepiece was here today measuring stuff. We had a bit of a hard time working out how to do the 'return' on the RHS of the fireplace, as it is a different depth (i.e. deeper) than the LHS of the fireplace. We worked it out. The colour will match the stained cherry cabinets, so I asked the kitchen cabinet supplier to get us stain to match for the mantlepiece.

18th, 19th and 20th

Things are still very busy around here. The deck outside our bedroom was demolished. We are replacing the door with a window, which will give us lots of extra usable room in our bedroom. We have to wait for the window to arrive, which will be a while (it will be ordered on Monday). The builder did suggest installing a second window in that wall to maintain symmetry, but it will use up too much space, so we're sticking with one. Russ called the Landscape designer to tell him the deck is now gone, so he doesn't need to cater for it..

The siding is progressing.. most of the old siding is down, the insulation is up, as is the sheet-rock. We're moving some power plugs, cable TV wires and phone wires while we have the siding down. The carpenters have been hacking down the bushes around the house to do the siding. Can't say I'm disappointed - those hedges bushes really were straight out of the 70s.

The concrete guys continued removing debris; they have laid supporting wire in prep for concrete and aggregate to be poured on Monday.

The carpenters fired a nail into a water pipe, so the plumber was called in to fix the leak :-)

The stone guy came by to template the fireplace. He's Australian, been here for 20+ years. Nice bloke.

The HVAC (heating/cooling) dude came by on Fri. Not too bright. Put holes in the walls to move heating ducts before actually checking the ducts could actually fit in the space under the floor. So instead of the ducts being installed int the walls, they will have to go in the floor. The idiot put a new hole in the floor right where a piece of furniture will go; even after I had told him and the contractor I was going to put furniture there. They did this while I was out for lunch. Argh! I also had to rush to the kitchen designer to pick up the specs for the Kitchen hood. The HVAC guy needed to know the specs! So I wasn't quite organized for that.

Electrician due on Mon. Need to make sure I have all the things I want him to do listed before then, including the location of the new lights outside.

While we were out at the FAAN walk on Sat, the carpenters came and removed the siding from the front upstairs. Cool. Looking forward to the siding being all consistent.

17th of September

OH MY GOD. The NOISE! The DUST. We have a jackhammer in the back yard breaking up the aggregate that had concrete all over it from the disabled ramp. All windows closed.

The carpenters are here pulling off the siding. I fear we will have chilly night tonight.. especially as the temp has dropped so much recently anyway. I told Russ we'd need to sleep upstairs tonight but he pooh-poohed me. I think the kids and I will be sleeping upstairs in the queen size bed, and Russ will be downstairs, freezing his nads off.

The kitchen designer came at the request of the contractor today. They walked over the layout of the cupboards, to make sure everything would fit; the contractor measured each cupboard and marked the location on the floor (for the floor cupboards), or on the wall joists (for the wall cabinets). Apparently the kitchen design software made an error, overlapping two cupboards by 3". So the designer ordered a replacement cupboard 3" shorter so it would all fit. Except during the walk through the contractor measured (twice) and worked out the original size would fit after-all. The additional cabinet was paid for by the kitchen designer!

I asked the contractor to add some detailing to the top of the windows (in addition to a sil we agreed on). It would currently look something like this.


What I had asked for is something like this.

And apparently it is all extremely expensive or time consuming. You wouldn't think, would you? Well, he just called me over. It is an additional $7,000 to put a fancy header on the windows. Yup. I don't believe it myself. I kinda though maybe $3,000? But $7,000??

And its only 9.30 in the morning.

11.30 Things are worrisome. The bathtub's been uncovered, and its not what I expected. That's the problem when buying from catalogs. I had found one I liked, but the designer and builder convinced me they wouldn't warranty the tub because it didn't have a factory-installed flange. Now I've got something I don't like. Actually its not that bad. Just not as nice as the one I had initially chosen.

I asked the plumber to insulate the tub by stuffing insulation around the outside before fitting it (the bath tub with factory-installed insulation was $500 more). I had asked the contractor weeks ago, but he had forgotten to tell the plumber. Thank goodness we were re-siding the house, as the insulation turned up today :-)

The plumber also replaced the water shutoff handle and valve today. Cool. Now we'll have a handle we can actually reach. The water came on at 4.25pm.

So.. alls quiet (apart from the kids getting ready for soccer).

L wanted to know why they took the side off the house.

Inspecting the hole left after concrete removal.. with a spray nozzle in hand.

Brother arrives to help investigate

16th September

Plumbers @ work again.. Some rather nasty smells wafting from the floorboards. No more said.

I asked the plumber to change all the outside faucets as they leak badly. He's cool with that.

The landscape contractor came out yesterday. We went over the yard to tell him what we wanted (generally speaking). It costs $850 to do a plan. If we then use him the money goes towards the cost of landscaping. Lets see what he comes up with.

15th of September

Plumbing dude and two helpers arrived today to do the rough plumbing. Lots of noise, and the permeating smell of glue. AND the plumbing fittings were delivered today! We have this HUGE box standing in the living room floor which is the bathtub; all plumbing related fixtures - including the kitchen sink. Literally.

Russ found Luke peeing in a small hole in the floor this evening.. He has a thing for peeing in strange places. Boys. Go figure.

12th of September

.. and then they rested.

Well, they didn't turn up. Not sure what they were up to! It was kinda nice, actually. After so much noise, a day of quiet and privacy.

11th of September

I've never heard so much noise so close-by in my life! The demo guys are back to cut out some of the brick surrounding the fireplace, so that the brick surround is symmetric around the actual opening. It had been lopsided with more bricks on the left than on the right; and the bricks also extended another five bricks out! Which I assume was a design feature?? Love those designers. You can also see the narrow cupboard that had been there has been demo'd.

Anyway, the number of bricks to the left and right of the fireplace will soon be the same, without any weird stick out. In the mean time, it's b!#%dy noisy! And dusty.


Our contractor called. The quote for the siding came in a little less than expected.. it was $29k (including new insulation and replacing the plywood, the new siding and labour). I think it will give the house a really great facelift. The contractor worked on a house nearby, and suggested we take a peek at the siding.. I got to admit it looks great. Take a look.



11.30am. Its all gone quiet. I sneak down to have a look.. You can see the fireplace is now a 'normal' shape, and the semicircular brick hearth is gone. All the wood 'facing' has been taken down.




And the pocket door (which listed to the right) is also gone. Note to self.. need to make sure we shove the cable-line up through the floor while the plasterboard is off!!





And here is the deck for the bath.. it looks enormous!